antebellum
by ribbons-blue
Summary: She had once believed that the fairytale prince's kiss was meant to steal away the pain. But Elena's story was never in the habit of adhering to tradition. [Elijah x Elena] AU "American Gothic"


_**story note: AU version of the 'American Gothic' Episode**  
_

* * *

/./

New York.

It was supposed to be a wild, untamed metropolis—a city of reaching buildings with glinting glass windows, the thick scent of food in the air, and the meld of unpleasant and secure in the sheer density of people that could be squeezed onto the streets and sidewalks.

New York.

It was the sanctum of aspirations, according to some.

Those were the hopeful souls, the ones who came searching for excitement and sensation to enrich their humdrum existences. Those were the beings that could still laugh and cry without refrain, who could taste every breath of their ephemeral lives, not knowing that all it took for their life's light to flicker out was one quick snap of the neck.

New York.

To Elena, it was just a dull reminder of dreams that were fucking dead (_whisperings in the night with a young Jeremy, spinning tales of how they'd one day escape from their little town and traverse the world's mighty offerings). _

And frankly, good riddance.

She didn't have the time or inclination for fanciful thinking anymore, and it was quite the relief to wander down the legendary streets and pass by the brochure-advertised sights without the childish awe she might once have exhibited and the crush of pain that surely would have bloomed within her now.

To be honest, that was probably why Damon had abandoned her a short time ago, casting a worried glance at her and mumbling some vague command not to chew on any of the locals while he went and searched for the elusive Katherine.

How very boring.

But then again, 'boring' was a word that had characterized their entire road trip up to New York—hours of endless silence and cagey looks tossed at her by Damon.

Contrary to that initial, spontaneous journey down south so very long ago (_a different Elena then, so very different)_, there was no laughter, no teasing, no bickering, and no conversation in that cramped, suffocating atmosphere that nearly made her shove the door open and leap into the road with the intent of _running_ to the damn city.

Damon's continual, wary side-scrutiny of her hadn't done anything to detract from that feeling of being smothered (_although she wasn't quite sure if that just didn't have something to do with the Salvatores' relentless hovering in general). _

After the five hundredth is-she-or-isn't-she-going-to-snap visual survey she had sarcastically assured him that she was hardly going to fling herself out of the car and begin deranged gnawing on a few of the mooing cows in the farm fields they kept passing by (that was Stefan's area of expertise, after all).

But rather than alleviate any of the tangible tension that caressed her throat like a tightly-drawn noose, her words had been greeted with the _click _of the door lock.

She hadn't been sure as to whether indignation at his low regard for her strength or humor at the futility of the gesture was appropriate, but Elena had learnt long ago to pick her battles with the Salvatores—and this was not one she nurtured the inclination to fight.

Taciturn and stubborn ignoring of one another had spawned between them then…and continued even when they had finally passed into New York, reached the city, gotten out of the car, and eagerly agreed to part ways in search of Katherine (well, it had been more of a case of Damon donning a _I'm-off-to-search-for-more-pleasant-female-company _face and fleeing to escape Elena's blank stares and deadpan responses—because if he couldn't have bright and peppy human Elena, then he didn't want her at all, obviously.)

Hence Elena's directionless wandering at the present time.

She'd granted a few half-interested looks at the necks of some passerby…but this being the Big Apple, the prospective meals were there and gone in a flash, sprinting to get to their oh-so-urgent appointments while shouting into cellphones, rushing by to battle time.

Elena had the faint urge to inform them that they should really stop and smell the roses (figurative roses, as it was the city of concrete, steel, and glass), because there wasn't a guarantee that they wouldn't be stone cold dead come the next day. But she promptly disregarded that distant thought, as being emotionless really did wonders for the entire "to hell with it" mindset that promoted the lovely state of being unconcerned with anyone's fate beside her own.

So, in her aforementioned mindset of utter unconcern and glazed-eye boredom, Elena went wandering through the streets of New York in search of some of its advertised thrills.

In retrospect, it was probably this inattention to her surroundings that led to her, about an hour after parting from Damon, being ensconced in someone's unyielding grip and unceremoniously pulled into one of the city's various dark alleyways.

Because, dammit, when _wasn't _Elena Gilbert's life one big movie cliché?

/./

Elena sighed noisily even as she was bodily hauled into the little side street and pushed against a thoroughly discomfiting wall, mentally thanking the fact that in the span of mere seconds, vampire healing abilities would afford her the advantage of being as unblemished and unbruised as she had been but a minute previously.

While this would hardly have been her reaction to such a situation months ago, she could allow such a carefree attitude now for two reasons:

One, she was a vampire now. Short of needing to worry if her assailant carried any convenient wooden stakes on his personage, ordinary thugs who liked to prey on young women weren't much of a threat anymore.

Two, the person before her was most certainly _not_ a street thug. In fact, applying such a plebian, depreciating term to _him_ would likely result in narrowed eyes and a royally prim 'We are not amused' frowny-face…because for all of his relatively relaxed mannerisms, Elijah Mikaelson still had an elitist streak a mile long that was unlikely to be reduced any time soon.

Elena stared up impassively at the vampire towering over her, idly wondering how odd it was that despite her being clad in four-inch heels and hardly the poster child for shortness, Elijah still managed to loom ominously. It had to be that uncanny ability of him amplifying his perceived height simply by donning his _serious vampire_ visage that had most unfortunate folk sprinting in the opposite direction in a panic.

She lifted her chin up defiantly in accordance with the New, Non-Frightened Elena that she had constructed herself to be, fighting back a rising smirk at the very thought of fleeing from Elijah and risk jeopardizing what promised to be a very _entertaining_ source of amusement in an otherwise monotonous day.

Brown eyes, no longer warm and reminiscent of hot chocolate that safeguarded against winter's chill, flicked upwards to sink into unblinking black. Her mind was surprisingly unflustered (_calm_, even) at being confronted by a man she had once sought respect and trust from, a man who had once been able to reduce poor, pitiful human Elena into an uncertain mess of hormonal nerves.

A small tingle scurried, uncomfortably insect-like, up along her spine as she mutely absorbed the anger radiating from his boring gaze—

—the only question remained as to whether it was meant for the centuries-old woman who had fled from his side in an act of treachery, or the girl who had recently and far-too-easily slaughtered his younger brother?

Katherine? Or Elena?

She wondered which girl he thought she was.

She received an answer to her partially intrigued question in the sudden tightening of his grasp upon her in one uncharacteristically uncontrolled, convulsive movement.

"No," he breathed, as though warding off the impossible truth that was plainly yielded before him.

Elena almost shivered with delight at the small flash of dismay that flickered across his usually impenetrable expression.

_Yes,_ she thought serenely, practically crooning the word in her mind as she noted the way in which his hands slackened in their grip. _It hurts, doesn't it Elijah? I remember…I remember hurting, too. _

Once. She had hurt so much once, hadn't she?

She remembered flames, and a dead body, and wild screams that seemed to be ripped from her very flesh….and then nothingness.

She had made it go away, in one glorious sweep that had banished every painful thought, every shuddering wail, to reclusion in the smallest, blackest corners of her mind. It was but a distant memory now, like an old black and white film where the mouths moved restlessly, but no sound, no feeling emitted.

She cocked her head as she evenly met his surprised expression, wondering why Elijah didn't just turn his emotions off as well. Didn't just flick that metaphorical light switch that plunged everything into a blissful darkness. It made everything so vastly better, after all.

The smile that stretched across her face was tight, as artificial as the ones artists scrawled across their canvases and equally as lacking in human warmth. She could not muster any pity to soften her hard gaze, could not inject even the tiniest shred of kindness in the contortion of her lips.

"Hello, Elijah." The greeting was an uncommon drawl from her mouth; his eyes intensified and posture turned tensely taut at her deliberate resemblance to the woman who had once committed the worst of betrayals. "Fancy seeing you here."

Her cool hands reached up to nonchalantly brush away his limp ones from her personage, as though he were an irritating speck of dust marring her pristine clothes. Where she once might have felt a girlish shock of excitement at Elijah's patricianly pale skin upon hers, or inwardly trembled at the thought of daring to touch someone whose power so greatly outranked her own strength but regarded her with such an odd docility…now, there was nothing.

Nothing—like she had felt with Damon and the fiery looks she was now strangely indifferent too. Nothing—like she had felt with Stefan and his careful treading about her, his almost brotherly concern for her repulsive.

Nothing, nothing, nothing. She desired no lovers to thaw her heart, she needed no more brothers or fathers to weather her through the storms, and she wanted no friends who made it their solemn priority to dictate who 'Elena Gilbert' should be.

"Please don't look like that," she chided the still-silent vampire, his stony face nearly blending into the wall behind him for all of its expressionless immobility.

Elena spread her arms wide, twirling lightly about—like a child showing off a new dress, eager to impress and be admired. "This is your sister's doing, after all. Aren't big brothers supposed to compliment their efforts? Really, since it took about a hard-earned second for her to step in front of the truck I was in—"

"Enough…Elena." There was something akin to dread on his face, writ in the tightly drawn line of his mouth and the inky shadows lurking in his gaze. The way in which his voice curled around her name was hard and hesitant, as though inviting her to laughingly contradict the title and assert herself to be _Katherine. _

But there were to be no jokes, and there had not been laughter in Elena's life for a long time now.

Elena plowed on, intoxicated on the ability to voice such thoughts without a fear of crying, a fear of panic, a fear of _him_ plaguing her. "And then it took probably two seconds for Matt to swerve right off the bridge—"

"_Stop."_

"Maybe only half a second to plunge right into the water though," Elena mused dreamily, that black water seeping into her mind in the smothering sensation she had been forced to experience twice in her life thus far. "About minute for me to actually drown. Stefan tells me I was utterly and completely dead when he finally got around to pulling me out. Poor him—he made a note to tell me how traumatized he was while _I _was lying there _dead_."

Elijah was quiet then, no interruptions renting the air between them—and what words could he impart, really? Elena had been victim of awkward attempts at conversation and fumbling condolences from people after her parents' deaths…what the hell did one say to the person who had actually died, then?

Sucks to be you?

You deserved it?

I'm sorry?

Were any of those things really adequate, appropriately encompassing of what had happened to her? When her parents had died, Elena and Jeremy had begun keeping a tally-mark chart, labeled "Useless Grieving Crap People Say". 'I understand' had been at the top of the list—the siblings had promptly sworn to kick the next person whose lips even _began_ to shape those laughable words.

Because _no_, they most certainly _did not_ understand.

No one could, because whether you ranted or cried, screamed or smashed, or even burned your house to the ground, each form of grief was unique to the mourner.

It was probably fortunate that Elijah was wiser than most of the ignorant fools who had shuffled their way up to Elena to snivel out regrets and things meant to be comforting in her "time of need". Even the pretense of apology would be enough to rekindle with a fury the irritation that had been boiling away beneath the surface these days, most likely resulting in her leaping at Elijah with her teeth bared and a very early death for one Elena Gilbert.

Death.

On second thought, it was a bit silly to be frightened of anything of the sort now, wasn't it?

She took one daring step closer to Elijah, tilting her head in the quintessential look of idle curiosity. "Did you know, Elijah?" she asked then, one finger tracing its way across her lips thoughtfully. "That I was a vampire?"

There was no reply. Not that it was needed, for Elijah's steely expression really said it all. _Forget a thousand words_, Elena hummed to herself, as an inordinate amount of pleasure swept along already giddy nerves. _This one's worth a million useless words. _

"You did," she concluded; no query in that one, short little statement.

Her eyes tracked his movements as he resolutely turned away from her, lightly resting one hand against the alley wall as though relying on it for support. His fingers barely grazed the wall, but the telltale crumbling of brick dust floating to the ground in a red mist did not go unseen by her newfound eyesight.

She smiled mirthlessly (_but that was the only form of a smile she could conjure up these days)_. The words tumbled from her mouth before she could prevent it, laced with the poison of amusement. "Did you come to kill me then, Elijah?"

Still, there was no answer. Elena repressed the need to huff a loud, overbearing sigh—figured that the exact time she finally decided to grow a pair would be when Elijah chose to turn all reticent and moody. Right now, this conversation was about as stimulating as a discourse with a brick wall.

Elena wanted _reaction_, she wanted _passion_. If she had been in a craving disposition for stoniness and silence, she would have engaged a building in a tête-à-tête.

"I murdered Kol. But I'm sure you already know that." This statement was delivered quickly, a harsh brutality in them that rivaled anything she could do to him with a stake in her hand or the sharp tips of her teeth. She was baiting him, waiting to see just how much noble Elijah could take before her finally succumbed to the vehement feelings she practically _knew _must be broiling inside of him.

No person, living or dead, could resist the pulling, inconveniently emotional ties of _kinship_, after all.

(_"They're dead! They're all dead! There's no one left, no one!_")

"Murder…" she mused, savoring the word on her tongue like a fine meal. "We rarely call it like it is, do you know that? I didn't think of it like that at the time. After all, Damon kills—he calls it 'necessity'. Stefan kills—he calls it 'a mistake'. I killed…and once, I called it 'protecting'. But Jeremy's gone now, and I don't have anything to protect anymore."

Her eyes fall on Elijah's stiffened back again, and the hand that clenched revealingly against the wall. She had once fancied Elijah as the most vulnerable of his family—so quick to care about things he should have left well enough alone, despite his claims of indifference and cool practicality. The old Elena, she would have had the insatiable urge to go to him now, press her face against his broad back and wrap her arms comfortingly about his waist.

This Elena, however, has no such compulsion.

"And you, Elijah?" she inquired liltingly, teasingly. "What will you call it when you destroy me? When my blood is thick on your hands and my eyes are blank and staring?"

(_But Jeremy's eyes, she remembers, had been peacefully closed, as though he were merely entangled in sleep). _

She briefly lapsed into silence, considering. "Revenge, perhaps? Comeuppance? A long damn time in the coming? Any one of those is befitting, probably."

It was with a soft _thump _that she allowed her body to fall against one of the sturdy buildings that boxed them into this confining space, staring up unseeingly at the sky in a passable impression of a lifeless corpse as the distant sounds of New York infiltrated the quiet, dirty little niche of solitude.

"Or perhaps," she spoke with a marked weariness, one to rival any wizened old human or vampire downtrodden by the passage of time. "Perhaps that's not it at all. Maybe you're here to rescue me from my own darkness, hm?"

Elena offered the sky a bland smile.

"Really," she said, voice dropping to a starkly honest whisper. "With you, I can never quite tell."

Because in the end, that was what they were.

They were dilapidated mansions and dank caves. Stolen moments in cramped alleyways. Threats that rolled from the tongue with silvery sleekness, interspersed between gentle glances.

Elena and Elijah, forever treading that fine line that flirted with camaraderie and vilification. Elena knew that Elijah was just as likely to offer a hand in forgiveness as he was to slice that same hand through every major tendon connecting her head to the rest of her body.

Elena righted herself into a standing position, allowing one long breath to drain from her before speaking curtly to his still-turned away form. "Seeing as you're not in the conversational mood right now—

(_the pleasant hint of remembrance that warmed his voice as he accompanied her through the woods, weaving for her the story of his boyhood)_

—I'm leaving."

She doesn't get far in her grand exit.

It may be due to the fact that she chose to waltz out of the alleyway with slow, mocking motions, or the fact that she was too preoccupied with summoning a smirk to send at Elijah as one final farewell gift.

But more likely, it was because Elijah had caught her arm in a steely grip, swinging her about in a callously severe manner, and brought his mouth crashing harshly down upon hers.

/./

His lips were warm.

That was the only thought that flitted through her frozen mind as she was firmly pressed against the taller male's front, the stiff edges of his immaculate suit melding into her body.

Elena had been on the receiving end of a fair few kisses in her teenage years, as most girls were. These had varied—the awkward experience of the fumbling first smooch with Matt at fifteen; the chaste peck she had once given Tyler on his birthday (damn spin-the-bottle, was all she had to say about _that)_; the tentative kiss of Stefan, as though she were the most delicate of glass that would shatter under too much pressure; the domineering ones of Damon that hardly allowed her a breath in edgewise.

Elijah's—if she were forced to characterize it—was the kiss of a parched man who had decided to indulge in the alluring mirage of water before he perished. Tinted with hunger and lined with a jolting undercurrent of unmitigated _anger_, this was about the furthest thing from a fantasy-worthy kiss between tender lovers.

This was brutal.

This was _raw_.

It was desire at its finest and its worst—perfected after centuries of wandering the earth in search of banal distractions and mindless pleasures.

And somehow, all Elena could summon was a faint _Oh_, somewhere in those rigorously repressed corners of her mind, those locked-away vestiges of a girl she had made sure to banish for good.

Her heavy-lidded gaze (_surprise, not passion, she told herself) _was greeted with a yawning chasm of black as his eyes opened slowly.

Those damn eyes of his, the ones that both regarded her in that uniquely gentle fashion and pierced her with the reminder that he was not one to be trifled with. Adoration and ferocity, wisdom and a naïve wish to believe in innate goodness—warring entities that made Elijah Mikaelson the indefinable, and ultimately pitiful, being that he was.

Elijah murmured something against her lips then; the faintest of whispers that were foreign even to her newly keen ears.

For a second, Elena was confused.

And then it happened.

The most horrible, terrible, thing that could have happened, happened.

If they had been exchanging metaphorical blows before, then Elijah would have snatched up his weapon and slammed it straight through to her abandoned heart as his last retaliation.

Because she _felt_.

She could _feel_.

She could feel the harsh brick wall, its weather-worn edges pricking into her back. She could feel every unyielding contour of Elijah's lithe body molded, breast-to-breast, against hers. She could feel chilling breath gusting lightly across her lips, smooth fingers cradling her face with an alien tenderness that fit neither the imposingness of his character nor the fury-fueled tension of the past moment.

But while she had superficially taken in all of these sensations before, a barrage of _emotions—_surprise, happiness, weariness, despair—accompanied them accordingly, her blankness of countenance usurped by the rapid flicker of each one across her face.

Oh _god. _

Elena gave one frantic, dry sob as her chest constricted, as her head began to scream and yell and curse and exalt at the ocean welling up inside of her. To describe the experience was far from plausible—selecting the words to liken it to any known sensation would have been beyond the skill of even the greatest literary craftsmen of the world, sending them scrambling for their dictionaries and thesauruses and _still _managing to leave off woefully short of an adequate depiction.

It took but one severe shove upon the vampire before her, and she was crushed against the wall, aghast and eyeing his solemn form.

"What did you _do?"_ Elena choked out, clutching her hair as though intent upon ripping it straight from the scalp. She sank to the ground in an uncollected heap.

_(The panic that had engulfed her upon waking up on the gurney, the sorrow of a girl looking down at her family's pitifully expansive grave plot, the numbness of surrendering her body to pain and sex and pleasure as she sought some way to cower in listless refuge.)_

"You were looking for me to blame you…and you were rather obviously seeking to die." In that implacable face, his dark eyes were sad. So sad. Elena could distantly sense her body beginning to quake—a child bordering on weepiness. "I'm afraid I can accommodate you with neither pursuit, Elena."

Jeremy's face, an image that had not strayed far from her mind in the last few weeks, had returned with a vengeance…and with something so unendurable that had someone ripped her in two, it would not have hurt half so much. The ghost of his memory smiled boyishly at her, contrasting the horrifying grimace that twisted violently upon her own face.

The next words slipped past her trembling lips as a desperate scream. "What did you _do!"_

"I believe you're already aware." He was as placid as she was tormented, as clinically removed as she was frantic. Hands in his suit pockets (_she couldn't see the tight fists they were clenched into) _and figure as stiff and formal as ever—Elena hated him for that icy composure, so very much. "It wouldn't be nearly so frightening were you not."

Elijah glanced down at her, the lost little girl lamenting pitiably at his feet, keening as she shook her head back and forth in a daze.

In that moment, Elena knew, she was no brave human rallying her last thread of fraying courage to negotiate with him; no supernatural Doppelganger heedlessly confronting a creature she knew to far outstrip in strength and wiles.

She was just broken, stupid little Elena. Broken Elena, who had thought to trade pain for blessed apathy and ended up the poorer for it.

"You supposed I was here to save you or grant you death's reprieve, Elena. I am here to tell you that I am not."

But Elena's thoughts were fracturing into tiny, infantile threads of incoherency, and Elijah's words made about as much sense as the poetry of a foreign tongue.

"Everything," she whimpered, her cracking voice embedded with a thousand shattering layers of glass. Elena wrapped her arms about herself, trying in vain to compress that awful _everything_ back into that little cubby of obscure darkness. "Elijah, I can—everything—it's too much, too much! You turned them back _on. You gave everything back and I don't want it, I don't want it!_"

"I know." Elijah's tone was unearthly in its gentleness, its weary understanding. But there was no move to comfort her, no move to relieve her of the utter hell he had so cruelly revisited upon her.

He had once cradled her against him as he fell to the ground, fingers entwined in her hair even as a dagger found its way into his chest.

He had once torn her from the choking grip of his sister, lightly brushing a hand upon her cheek afterwards in apology for her sufferance.

He had once caused the very earth to crumble with one lash of his foot, shielding her safely all the while.

He had once been a friend when she had none, the sole proponent of the hard choices she had been forced to make for the continuance of her conscience and the thriving of her precious people.

She had once thought him the truest example of the metaphorical double-edged sword…but now, she found no relief from his jagged edges in the form of a compassionate touch or a kind word. There was no relief from _this_, she cried to herself, not unless…unless…

"Then take it away," she pleaded, tears wracking her thin figure as she hunched over on herself, reminiscent of the night Jeremy had died. No longer confined to her heart, it was a physical pain now, streaking its scarring way through muscle and bone and blood. "If you know, Elijah, take it away." She looked up at him, supplication in the crystalline liquid that dripped from her lashes and agony wavering in each tearing gasp. "Because I can't _bear feeling like this."_

But perhaps there was nothing to appeal to anymore, no lingering feelings on his behalf—despite the fact that Elena-the-Human firmly believed kisses were born out of love and caring, Elena-the-Vampire had come to understand that physical intimacy did not always come inextricably linked with such emotions.

For if anything deeper, _purer_, than anger had fueled that kiss, Elijah couldn't possibly choose to stand by and watch her suffer so greatly.

The simplest explanation was that he just didn't care anymore. But this wasn't a surprise—no one did, and Elena was used to being let down over and over and over by the people she loved the most.

Damon had robbed her of all emotion because he didn't know how to begin going about removing the dead expression in her eyes and the quaver in her voice. Stefan had stood by and allowed such a violation to occur. Elijah, the one person she had once jeopardized the safety of her friends for and risked their wrath, had apparently satisfied his rightly-earned thirst for revenge by awakening a hurt he comprehended all too well.

Maybe that was why her vampire self had vigorously sought to accomplish what her human side was incapable of doing—the severance of connections, and with it the enduring pain such things brought. After all, it was so much easier to alienate each and every treasured person than to continually have one's heart crushed by those people.

Elena, still clutching her middle and finding it difficult to even draw breath around the tightness of her tear-cloyed throat, watched mutely as Elijah retrieved a small, round flask from the inner pocket of his suit coat. Her mouth worked silently as she shakily focused her vision on the tiny little object that had introduced so much trouble and heartache.

"Katerina traced me to this city, Elena." His long fingers wrapped around the bottleneck tightly, as he nonchalantly held it up to the small stream of light trickling from between the lines and pipes crisscrossing the alleyway's upper level. Elijah gave it the barest of shakes with a light frown, as though bemused by the ravenous desire of a majority of the supernatural community to attain such a thing. "For the purpose of…a trade, you might say. Her assured safety from any pursuance of her on my part, in return for _this_."

"Then you _knew_," Elena croaked out the first thing coming to mind. "You knew right away it was me."

Elijah's answering smile lacked any of its usual cordiality, nothing but bitterness to be found in that quirk of the lips. "I had hoped otherwise, Elena…but, yes."

"And my brother d-died," she spat with a terrible realization, "so that she could be free of you."

As though she had taken hold of it and yanked, his perfunctory smile fled from his face and his eyes turned hard.

"No, Elena," Elijah said then, crouching down to lift her chin with a long, commanding finger, so that one blurred gaze and one grave stare collided. "Both our brothers died because of our foolishness, our pride. And we are both paying the terrible price for that now."

Her nails dug into the cement as he released her chin and stood in a swift, fluid movement, demeanor as naturally imperious as ever. "And we will both continue to pay it, for a very, very long while."

And with those imparted words, Elijah turned and left, leaving Elena collapsed upon the hard, cold street—

(_the world threatening to consume her whole and the sky turning viciously dark and her breath being siphoned by Death's own hand)_

—crying and miserable, a girl whimpered for her brother in a plaintive plea that went unheard.

/./

Moonlight stole away the sun and the stars emerged from their blanketing veils.

Damon would find her hours later, still curled up in the very same spot, still with cold tears washing her cheeks raw.

Neither would notice the dark eyes carefully watching Damon scoop Elena off the ground, carrying her to comfort and safety…a man's gaze that had retained a steady vigilance over the weeping girl ever since his assumed departure.

Neither would glance back to see the vampire cloaked in the alley's darkness, mutely staring at where a young woman had been subject to the cruelest form of punishment, and by his own doing.

And come the next morning, the building owners would shout and yelp in outrage and confusion at the fist-sized holes punctured about a dozen times in the walls of the alley, dried blood born of self-loathing and a sacrificed love staining oxidizing crimson on dull red.

Because it is not difficult to play the villain when such an archetype is needed, and Elijah was so very, _very_ adept at it.

/./

* * *

**I actually wrote this before 'American Gothic' aired during season 4—this was after Damon shut Elena's emotions off and they went to NY to find Katherine, and I had so, so wished that Elijah would use his super-Original powers to restore her emotions. Yeah, didn't happen. **

**I seem to be on a binge of finding things I wrote a while ago and being all 'Eh, I guess I'll post it.' You wouldn't believe how many Elejah tidbits I have gathering dust on my computer. **

****And someone asked me if I had a tumblr – I do, for any interested people. It's 'somniferous-me . tumblr . com'. It's mostly for all my OUAT Captain Swan art sketches and stories though, but feel free to check it out or send me a message on there. I'm really bad at answering people on here, but I'm fairly quick about it on tumblr if anyone wants to talk Elejah with me :)****


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